


The Dude Card

by beanarie



Series: Failures At Communication [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: College AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some weeks into his relationship with Eames, Arthur makes a small withdrawal from the masculinity bank.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dude Card

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for k8, because I couldn't give her cuddles in person. <3

Eames had this thing he did sometimes when he was sleeping. Not always, just sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would rouse just enough to take another blanket and cover himself up twice. And this was in the environmentally over-controlled dorms, where the temperature inside skewed too warm for Arthur to ever need his favorite flannel pj's, even in the dead of winter.

One night, Eames literally muttered "cold" before blindly reaching out for a fleece throw. Under the two blankets, Arthur was both sweating and confused.

Guys weren't supposed to cuddle. Arthur and Eames tended to stay in the same bed, no matter which bed it happened to be, because duh, they were fucked out and it was late. No one wanted to go through the motions of putting on clothes and getting semi-presentable before taking a brisk walk of shame back to his room. But they didn't touch, not once the sucking and the thrusting and the kissing was over, not after mouths and dicks and asses were no longer involved. They were guys. Nailing each other didn't make them not dudes any more.

:::

In the dining hall, Eames was chuckling to himself at the table, alone, like a crazy person, when Arthur dropped his tray and took a seat.

He eyed the omelet on Eames's plate. "Those must be some entertaining mushrooms."

Eames speared several with his fork and shoved them into his mouth, still smirking. "A girl in my lab group asked if I knew anyone who went to the royal wedding."

"Okay." Arthur frowned. "And then she said something really funny?"

Eames shook his head, touching his lips as if to manually taper down his amusement. "No, no, it's just... weird." He looked pretty proud of himself, which was odd, and out of context.

Arthur took a second to decide he really liked the way Eames's lips, teeth and tongue formed the word "weird". Then he remembered that drinking game, the most inebriated Eames had been in Arthur's presence before or since. So much happened that night, Eames's accent dropping about two socio-economic classes as he slid further into drunkenness had failed to register as something important enough to puzzle over.

"Are you saying you're not 387th in line for the throne?" Arthur asked.

"Hardly. The flat we lived in before my mum finished school and got the job stateside, it was..."

"Yeah?"

"I have this recurring dream that I'm back there, copying over my course-notes, but I can't produce anything legible because I've got these enormous gloves on." He raised his hands, backside out to demonstrate. "We didn't have heat, you see."

Arthur managed to keep his eyebrows from shooting up to his hairline, choosing to go with a placid nod instead. "How long were you there for?"

"There was another place before that. It was all right. Rent was quite a lot higher, though, and food became an issue." His hands rose and fell in the air, simulating a scale. _Priorities_.

Arthur was the fourth of five children. He didn't wear a scrap of new-bought clothing until he started kindergarten, at which point he could already tell when the bills were due judging by the frequency and tone of his parents' arguments, but he had no frame-of-reference for the sort of pennilessness Eames was describing. He couldn't help blurting out, "That's awful."

"Well, I wouldn't recommend it," Eames said, winking. Everything about his demeanor seemed to convey that living that way hadn't been so bad. But it _had been_ , clearly, stark and wrong and it still weighed on him, even if he continued to eat his lunch with the same gusto he had before the conversation started, still looking pleased with his success at pulling the wool over his classmates' eyes.

Eames was so big on concealing anything that could be used against him. Arthur could appreciate that; the fact that Eames was a seventeen year-old who'd skipped two grades and re-copied his notes after every class (instead of a nineteen year-old who studied when he had to, but thought university was first and foremost a playground for big kids, like a good portion of the people on campus) would change the way everyone saw him, as would this new revelation about what circumstances had caused him to care so much about his studies. It was kind of amazing that Eames had initiated this conversation, knowing the likelihood that it would lead to, 'Oh, yeah. And also I grew up really poor.' Eames just said these things, not merely trusting that they wouldn't go any further than Arthur, but _knowing_ that they wouldn't, and God, Arthur liked Eames _so much_.

A plan began to form. A plan that started with a shower.

:::

They ended up in Arthur's room that night, which worked perfectly because Arthur had the suite with a bathroom included, whereas Eames was in the straight-up, old-style dorms with the fun, fungally-infected communal bathrooms at the end of the hall.

Once they were done, Eames wiped himself off lazily and pulled on his boxer shorts. "Shit," he said appreciatively.

"I know." Arthur grinned and grinned.

" _Shit_ ," Eames said again. A few heartbeats later, he turned onto his stomach and almost immediately his breathing started to even out.

That made Arthur think of the plan, which was good because he would have been content to just drift off right where he was.

"Where you running off to?" Eames said, without opening his eyes.

"I'm gross," was all the answer he gave, but it sufficed. Eames didn't protest.

As Arthur padded back into the room, he gave his wet hair one last hard rub with the towel and dropped it on the floor. Eames was still and quiet under the comforter, his shoulders and back expanding with every inhalation.

"Eames?" Arthur whispered. No answer.

Gingerly he pulled back the covers and placed a hand on the space between Eames's shoulders. "Eames?" No response.

Carefully, he positioned himself next to Eames, mindful of every dip and squeak in the mattress. First he scooted along on his backside until their hips were touching. Then he turned over on his side, molding himself against the other boy's body little by little, finally insinuating his left arm around until it circled Eames's waist. Eames didn't resist. More importantly, he didn't wake. Arthur pushed aside any personal feelings of weirdness on the matter and settled down, leaning his forehead against Eames's hair and breathing out slowly. This was actually kind of... nice, touching skin, touching warmth. Touching Eames. It was possible he could get used to it.

That night Eames didn't shiver once. Arthur would have known.


End file.
